[SOLVED] Recommend me an 8TB External desktop HDD

Solution
(1) has two years warranty...
(2) and (3) have 1 year .... I guess (1) is better in terms of reliability/durability ?
I mainly care about reliability/durability...Are there any drives in the same price range with better reliability/durability/warranty ?
For your single instance, 'reliability' doesn't really come into play. A false number.

If the fleetwide stats for WD is better than the fleetwide stats for Seagate...your single instance may be one of the outliers.
ALL drives are subject to fail, no matter what manufacturer.

And inside that enclosure is the same drive as if you bought it as an internal drive.
That Seagate is a regular Seagate Baracuda drive.

knowledge2121

Distinguished
Sep 5, 2013
789
3
18,995
(1) has two years warranty...
(2) and (3) have 1 year .... I guess (1) is better in terms of reliability/durability ?
I mainly care about reliability/durability...Are there any drives in the same price range with better reliability/durability/warranty ?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
(1) has two years warranty...
(2) and (3) have 1 year .... I guess (1) is better in terms of reliability/durability ?
I mainly care about reliability/durability...Are there any drives in the same price range with better reliability/durability/warranty ?
For your single instance, 'reliability' doesn't really come into play. A false number.

If the fleetwide stats for WD is better than the fleetwide stats for Seagate...your single instance may be one of the outliers.
ALL drives are subject to fail, no matter what manufacturer.

And inside that enclosure is the same drive as if you bought it as an internal drive.
That Seagate is a regular Seagate Baracuda drive.
 
Solution

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
"write speed" depends on a lot of factors.
Composition of the data is just as important as the drive. Lot of tiny files, through a USB interface, will be 'slower'...even if you were writing to an SSD.

Personally, I wouldn't stress over it. DIfferences between one spinning hard drive and another are small.
 

Deicidium369

Permanantly banned.
BANNED
Mar 4, 2020
390
61
290
How about SMR ? are all desktop external drives SMR with terrible write speeds ? Are there any non-SMR ones ?
Pretty sure SMR starts at higher cap drives. I have tons of 8TB Seagates - not a single failure. Bought a 14TB Seagate - managed to copy my retro folders over - then it just died. Returned, later bought a 16TB Seagate - just died after a very short time - still withing RMA time limited thru New Egg.

The external drives are NOT rated to be used as a desktop drive - those people shucking the external drives and using them in a NAS are playing loose with their data. THEY ARE ARCHIVE DRIVES - cold storage drives. but for a backup - which is what they are designed for - they work great - if a little slow at times. Seagate has externals and WD has externals - your preference.